The foundation of prayer is that it is the free flowing overflow of our identity as Children of God. The root of prayer is intimacy with our heavenly Father, one of the overflowing fruits of this intimacy is not only sharing the burdens and desires of our hearts with the Father, but hearing and bearing his burdens and the desires of His heart.
Our Father is a God who so loves the world that he intervened through sending His son to intercede on our behalf through the cross and eternally before the throne. The Father still loves the world, and he calls us as His children to carry on the intercessory ministry of Jesus on the earth through the empowering of the Holy Spirit. In doing this we mirror the ongoing work of Jesus before the Father, and we enter into the realisation of the Prayer of Jesus sharing fully in the vision of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Jesus faced with the ultimate act of intercession, cried out under the burden to be relieved from the weight of responsibility, and yet in the same breath humbled himself in acceptance of the call and responsibility upon him. Every act of intercession requires a level of selflessness, in fact any forward movement in discipleship will require a surrender of self, and prayer is no different. There is a cost of commitment in prayer, there is a burden to bear, and that is because the outcomes are so valuable. The outcome of the burden of responsibility Jesus bore is the opportunity of forgiveness, freedom, and living in relationship with the defining reality of our created lives, ‘the eternal God’. The outcomes of our faithfulness in prayer are to enable the fullness of this opportunity to be fully available to all.
The vision of this prayer wall is to facilitate and inspire consciously united prayer across Birmingham for the full breakthrough of God's purpose across the city and the opportunity of the Gospel to be available to all. For this to take place is a challenge for each of us to live a life worthy of our calling and stand within the inherited reward and responsibility of our adoption as children of God to pray.
This is a commitment that will be tested and will sometimes feel a burden but the more we bear it in faithfulness, the more we will grow in strength, and our prayers in influence and effectiveness.
How we connect to this prayer wall will be different for each one of us, for some of us it will be from a place of maturity in prayer, for others of us it will be a stretch. This prayer wall is designed to be accessible to all, providing a simple platform of unity in prayer that draws us together and that inspires us all individually and as a community of prayer across the city to mature and grow in our knowledge and practice of prayer.
As a starting point that will fuel connection with the prayer wall community, and that will inspire the development of prayer habits in us as individuals, the prayer wall is split down into 30 min time slots. We recommend a commitment to maintain this for an initial term. Such a duration will confront most of us with enough challenges to commitment (tiredness, not feeling like it, too busy, in a bad place with God), and yet hopefully set a goal that is short term enough to still aspire to / pick ourselves up for, rather than feeling like a failure that will never make the mark.
If such a regular time slot commitment is unrealistic due to changing work patterns, then please apply the spirit of it rather than the letter, and try to plan in prayer wall slots ahead of time that fits around life schedules.
In all honesty it is doubtful if anyone on the wall will maintain 100% faithfulness to prayer slot commitments, and to set such a goal could drive us with legalism, create pride in our prayer prowess, and make it harder to recover from any failure. The suggested parameters of commitment are there to inspire and nurture personal prayer engagement and unite us as a praying community across the city not operate as the definition of prayer.